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During the December 2011 Occupy protests in Portland, Ore.,
someone projected the Batman "bat signal" over the crowds onto a
building downtown. Then, one night, the signal was replaced by
slogans such as "End the Federal Reserve!" and "The revolution
will not be privatized!" Like the protests themselves, the
messages didn't originate from any one central source. The only
clue was that they came from anonymous protesters who were using
a revolutionary new social network called Celly.

Founded in April 2011 in Portland by Greg Passmore and Russell
Okamoto, Celly builds mobile social networks of all
sizes, both public and private, that can be accessed by any
cell phone with SMS and via a web browser, e-mail and the
company's iPhone and Android apps. "Group communication
unlocks so many possibilities across the socioeconomic and
political spectrums," Okamoto says. "We wanted to build the
simplest tool that we could, that would have the broadest,
deepest impact on the most people."

The service connects individual users into groups, called
"cells." Each individual gets a user name, an alias that ensures
his or her phone number remains private. Users can connect with
one cell or multiple cells. Public cells, like the Occupy
Portland channel, are listed on the Celly website, while private
cells are hidden and can be joined only by users who know the
group's name. Multiple cells can be linked together, or can
"listen" to other cells through a concept called hash-linking, in
which specific hash-tagged terms cause other cells to be included
on a particular communiqué.

Passmore and Okamoto prototyped Celly in 2008 while working
day jobs at data-management firm GemStone Systems in Beaverton,
Ore., but it wasn't until their employer was sold to VMWare in
2010 that the duo decided to build out their idea.

"The software we built while working at GemStone was for large
corporations--especially Wall Street banks--and that wasn't very
rewarding," Passmore says. "We are really motivated by using
technology in an egalitarian way, unlocking democracy."

As revolutionary as Celly's goals may sound, its user base so far
is mainly institutional. Most users have come from public school
districts; high-school coaches use the service to stay connected
with student athletes, and teachers employ it to elicit
participation from shy students. Portland's city government is
another big customer. Through cells for volunteer foot patrols,
the Gang Violence Task Force and the Portland Police Bureau, many
citizens and city workers are using Celly as well.

However, the service truly gained traction as a power for good in
the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. Emergency responders and
volunteers, lacking access to the internet, needed hyper-local
coordination, so nearby Occupy Wall Street veterans who were
familiar with Celly used the service to coordinate
transportation, logistics, food donations, blankets and clothing
among 2,500 users. "It captured everyone who wanted to help,"
Okamoto says--not unlike the bat signal.